Kinsey System/Albrect system

Go to page

New Member

I don't know where to post this thread, so I will try it here. One of my good friends and neighbours went to a Kinsey meeting 3-4 years ago and he came back so excited he couldn't hardly talk. After 3-4 years of trying different things on fields, he really hasn't found anything that worked or paid for itself and he's a bit frustrated. He hasn't given up, but his interest is definitely waning. Has anyone else tried any Kinsey/Albrect system and had good success? I asked this on TFF a few years ago and got bombarded by Kinsey disciples that were selling the system, so no similar posts needed this time thanks.

Member

I don't know where to post this thread, so I will try it here. One of my good friends and neighbours went to a Kinsey meeting 3-4 years ago and he came back so excited he couldn't hardly talk. After 3-4 years of trying different things on fields, he really hasn't found anything that worked or paid for itself and he's a bit frustrated. He hasn't given up, but his interest is definitely waning. Has anyone else tried any Kinsey/Albrect system and had good success? I asked this on TFF a few years ago and got bombarded by Kinsey disciples that were selling the system, so no similar posts needed this time thanks.

From a livestock perspective yes I've had very good success. We were low on mg in terms of base saturation. 3s and 4s. Ideal over 10. It's pretty much sorted our grass tetney problems.
We also put boron in some of our fert mixs as we were very low.

My advice is to stick to ca/mg and do the rest as normal till you get to where you need to be.

Whats his system of farming and whats the soil like? Have you an Albrecht sample we could look at?

Staff Member

Although Kinsey theory is sound it’s just not practical or economic for broad acre cropping

I take more of a “get the basics right” like drainage, pH and macro nutrient / indices (in that order of importance). And then anything that still shows lacking I feed to the plant rather than trying to change soil

Member

Although Kinsey theory is sound it’s just not practical or economic for broad acre cropping

I take more of a “get the basics right” like drainage, pH and macro nutrient / indices (in that order of importance). And then anything that still shows lacking I feed to the plant rather than trying to change soil

well as ca and mg both affect ph differently it makes sense to find out what is excessive/defficient. ca mg na and k can all affect ph. i.e if your lacking in mg on a % basis knowing to use dolomitic lime instead of calcium lime would be a wise way of using an albrecht test but adding little to your outgoings. putting on large amounts of p in a high calcium soil trying to get your "indices" up would also be an expensive way of doing things. getting your soil life up and going is going to be the main aim but if you can sort deficiencies for 25-30ton of the right lime it makes sense to use all the information you can get your hands on

Member

I've been looking at this too, but am on high calcium soils so I don't see how I'll ever get anything near an ideal Ca:Mg ratio. 90% of the farm is chalk and flint, so lime salesmen don't earn much from me though I do use mag lime for the odd bit of clay cap where pH does need fixing. Plant tissue tests show Ca as ok & the regular use of kieserite is slowly lifting Mg indices though @Warnesworth doesn't think this is an efficient way of getting plant available Mg. Boron consistently shows up as deficient in plant tissue tests so I apply it to winter crops. I should probably do more testing in spring crops but with most spray passes I'm applying K, Cu, Mn or Mg so there's a limit to what I can add that is compatible with the herbicide/fungicide!

Member

I've been looking at this too, but am on high calcium soils so I don't see how I'll ever get anything near an ideal Ca:Mg ratio. 90% of the farm is chalk and flint, so lime salesmen don't earn much from me though I do use mag lime for the odd bit of clay cap where pH does need fixing. Plant tissue tests show Ca as ok & the regular use of kieserite is slowly lifting Mg indices though @Warnesworth doesn't think this is an efficient way of getting plant available Mg. Boron consistently shows up as deficient in plant tissue tests so I apply it to winter crops. I should probably do more testing in spring crops but with most spray passes I'm applying K, Cu, Mn or Mg so there's a limit to what I can add that is compatible with the herbicide/fungicide!

My land must be the chemical opposite of yours, also not making the lime man very rich.
To the OP got to agree with Clive, get drainage right, as much OM as you can source and find out whether you need a Ca or Mg based lime. The start on the micronutrients.

Staff Member

well as ca and mg both affect ph differently it makes sense to find out what is excessive/defficient. ca mg na and k can all affect ph. i.e if your lacking in mg on a % basis knowing to use dolomitic lime instead of calcium lime would be a wise way of using an albrecht test but adding little to your outgoings. putting on large amounts of p in a high calcium soil trying to get your "indices" up would also be an expensive way of doing things. getting your soil life up and going is going to be the main aim but if you can sort deficiencies for 25-30ton of the right lime it makes sense to use all the information you can get your hands on

Member

I don't know where to post this thread, so I will try it here. One of my good friends and neighbours went to a Kinsey meeting 3-4 years ago and he came back so excited he couldn't hardly talk. After 3-4 years of trying different things on fields, he really hasn't found anything that worked or paid for itself and he's a bit frustrated. He hasn't given up, but his interest is definitely waning. Has anyone else tried any Kinsey/Albrect system and had good success? I asked this on TFF a few years ago and got bombarded by Kinsey disciples that were selling the system, so no similar posts needed this time thanks.

Member

Because soil balancing theory isnt scientifically repeatable acceptably at farm level. Who decides the right ratio to start with? The guy who did some stuff in plant pots in 1940? Its just preposterous

Its a wet dream for salesmen. And once enthusiasts have nailed their colours to the mast with it its hard to about turn. What I dont want to do is offend people who are into it though even though Im sure I will but I think its dodge

We have much to learn about soil and nutrient interactions but Ill bet my farm that Albrecht theory is not it

Member

Because soil balancing theory isnt scientifically repeatable. Who decides the right ratio? The guy who did some stuff in plant pots in 1940?

Its a wet dream for salesmen. And once enthusiasts have nailed their colours to the mast with it its hard to about turn. What I dont want to do is offend people who are into it though even though Im sure I will.

We have much to learn about soil and nutrient interactions but Ill bet my farm that Albrecht theory is not it

Total lack of scientific evidence of any benefit from any peer reviewed papers, the sampled soils might have performed well but if it isn't possible to replicate the ratios elsewhere it could be a coincidence or due to other (untested) factor.

For me. Its not enough to extrapolate from. Furthermore it doesnt stand to reason that the closer you get to 80/20 the "better" things get to say nothing of the unreliability of taking too much emphasis from a small sample of soil - test the same sample 6 times from 6 labs and you will get and different result if just doing normal npkmg and ph analysis

Member

You don't become President of the Soil Science Society of America by being an idiot. and to say that he was just playing around with a few pots of soil in a lab is a lazy argument will.

if calcium loosens soil and magnesium tightens it there has to be a point give or take a few % where things are easier for plant life. now if your soil is biologically dead using the albrecht system isn't going to help much. the percentages change slightly depending on the tcec of your soil. if you keep sending your samples to the same lab that consistently use the same extraction processes you should be getting pretty consistent results. if you do an albrecht and then do a plant sap analysis and find the same nutrients to be lacking would you consider it to be a good guide?

when we sampled our farm we didn't say which fields were problamatic with livestock health problems, but on the results there was notes at the bottom of these fields with warnings (percentage of k higher than %mg) which ment the plant was taking up excess k and by grazing it so were the animals which led to tetany, and the recomendation to spread dolomitic lime on some and kierserite on other field.

now show me any other system in the world that can give a farmer that kind of advice?

maybe i see it more because i'm a livestock farmer as well. you mightn't see a yield loss of .2 or .3 a hectare in a grain crop but you sure as hell see ill thrive and sick animals.

if you stick to percentages it makes lots of sense, ratios change depending on cec so are harder to follow and the synic in me says it just so people need to be paid to explian said ratio.

70% ca and mg over 11% for the majority of soils. (lighter soils with cec/tec under 10 will need more mg.

here are some of his publications,

Variable Levels of Biological Activity in Sanborn Field After Fifty Years of Treatment, Soil Science, 1938

Member

I think @marco's sentiments about Albrecht/Kinsey are not far off mine. I wouldn't consider myself a disciple but Albrecht does have a lot of relevance, especially where we are trying to seek marginal gains in soil management in CA systems.
As @marco says above calcium is the constructive element, while magnesium, potash and sodium are all working against you to a greater or lesser degree. Add in their relative effects on soil pH, the laws of the minimum and maximum, why some elements will block others, and you start to understand why some soils become incredibly difficult to manage and don't perform as they should. Then to keep the cost down we treat the symptom rather than the problem, which as @Clive points out treating the problem maybe prohibitively expensive.

That said, I am not into soil balancing per se but I do believe that we underestimate the incredible importance of calcium. I don't sell calcium before any clever dick suggest's I do. But I do see an awful lot of crushed rock sold as calcium that simply isn't fit for purpose (we test it ourselves to ensure this is fact) and so am not surprised when people say they added calcium and it didn't work. Also using soil pH to determine calcium applications is the most imprecise piece of science, (along with variable rate application's based on RB209 but that's another story). We also forget that salt based fertilisers are incredibly effective at stripping out active calcium from our soils.

I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with Neil Kinsey and can say that I think that many of the soils in the States that he deals with are probably more 'broken' than ours.
Dr Tim Reinbott at the University of Misssouri is currently field testing Albrecht recommendations over multiple years. His work has found some surprising results...

Member

I think @marco's sentiments about Albrecht/Kinsey are not far off mine. I wouldn't consider myself a disciple but Albrecht does have a lot of relevance, especially where we are trying to seek marginal gains in soil management in CA systems.
As @marco says above calcium is the constructive element, while magnesium, potash and sodium are all working against you to a greater or lesser degree. Add in their relative effects on soil pH, the laws of the minimum and maximum, why some elements will block others, and you start to understand why some soils become incredibly difficult to manage and don't perform as they should. Then to keep the cost down we treat the symptom rather than the problem, which as @Clive points out treating the problem maybe prohibitively expensive.

That said, I am not into soil balancing per se but I do believe that we underestimate the incredible importance of calcium. I don't sell calcium before any clever dick suggest's I do. But I do see an awful lot of crushed rock sold as calcium that simply isn't fit for purpose (we test it ourselves to ensure this is fact) and so am not surprised when people say they added calcium and it didn't work. Also using soil pH to determine calcium applications is the most imprecise piece of science, (along with variable rate application's based on RB209 but that's another story). We also forget that salt based fertilisers are incredibly effective at stripping out active calcium from our soils.

I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with Neil Kinsey and can say that I think that many of the soils in the States that he deals with are probably more 'broken' than ours.
Dr Tim Reinbott at the University of Misssouri is currently field testing Albrecht recommendations over multiple years. His work has found some surprising results...

Member

I think @marco's sentiments about Albrecht/Kinsey are not far off mine. I wouldn't consider myself a disciple but Albrecht does have a lot of relevance, especially where we are trying to seek marginal gains in soil management in CA systems.
As @marco says above calcium is the constructive element, while magnesium, potash and sodium are all working against you to a greater or lesser degree. Add in their relative effects on soil pH, the laws of the minimum and maximum, why some elements will block others, and you start to understand why some soils become incredibly difficult to manage and don't perform as they should. Then to keep the cost down we treat the symptom rather than the problem, which as @Clive points out treating the problem maybe prohibitively expensive.

That said, I am not into soil balancing per se but I do believe that we underestimate the incredible importance of calcium. I don't sell calcium before any clever dick suggest's I do. But I do see an awful lot of crushed rock sold as calcium that simply isn't fit for purpose (we test it ourselves to ensure this is fact) and so am norprised when people say they added calcium and it didn't work. Also using soil pH to determine calcium applications is the most imprecise piece of science, (along with variable rate application's based on RB209 but that's another story). We also forget that salt based fertilisers are incredibly effective at stripping out active calcium from our soils.

I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with Neil Kinsey and can say that I think that many of the soils in the States that he deals with are probably more 'broken' than ours.
Dr Tim Reinbott at the University of Misssouri is currently field testing Albrecht recommendations over multiple years. His work has found some surprising results...

I don't quite have the same view of Calcium as you - its not a romantic element to me in the way that some of the Albrecht stuff views it (maybe not so much the man himself but he's not here anymore) .

I wouldn't use soil pH to determine calcium applications though - I use soil pH to measure percentage hydrogen. Its the carbonate in lime that is the pH corrector not the calcium. Obviously there can be a sensible need to use maglime or calime to correct pH but that isn't really an albrect thing that just depends if your soil is very high Ca or Mg in the first place.

As for fertilisers being high salt I'm not so sure thats true - they're all pretty soluble

Member

Most fertilisers are water soluble and most fertilisers are chemically salts such as potassium chloride, magnesium sulphate etc etc. Once the salt has disassociated in water (split) the anion combines with another cation, most commonly calcium. So in the case of potassium chloride you end up with calcium chloride, with the potassium ion left behind as the plant food. The new salt calcium chloride is also water soluble and tends to leach through the soil profile with drainage. Hence the loss of calcium.

Quite correct. If you want to correct acid pH (i.e neutralise the Hydrogen ions on the soil colloid) you need carbonate. The cheapest form being calcitic or dolomitic lime. But if the lime still resembles road grit when spread it isn't going to react and neutralise anything.
But high levels of magnesium, potash or sodium can keep the soil pH high but you have no calcium. Calcium is an essential plant mineral and one which a lot of studies show is essential for the uptake of many other minerals, therefore if you are short of calcium you will be depriving your crop of other essential minerals too.

Share this page

The National Farmers Union (NFU) has set out its plans for achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rom British Agriculture by 2040 – a decade ahead of the government’s ambition for the whole UK economy. NFU president Minette Batters first announced the net zero by 2040 goal at this year’s Oxford Farming Conference in […]